The Mpost effect

We featured Vali Jamal’s ‘wrist-breaker before it will be a blockbuster’ 8Kg book – Uganda Asians – in our 23 February 2014 edition. Vali shares with us the ripples our interview created in Kampala.

I think for the first time I got to explain the rationale behind my book and on some of its contents. Around a dozen people wrote in, often one-liners, but it showed me ten times as many people saw the column and liked it. ‘Unique’, ‘labour of love’, ‘generational’ were typical of the comments received. The best one I liked said, ‘Sure the book will last for generations to come and in that time the family will have gone through several dusters.’ 

The best collateral benefit of the interview was elicited from the Governor of the Bank of Uganda. Central Bank Professor Chancellor Emmanuel Tumusiime–Mutebile. He has been following the progress of my book since its start and wants to see it out to further Uganda’s ‘commercial diplomacy’, given that the book puts forth a very favourable picture of Uganda under Museveni, whose ‘economic miracle’ is attributed to Prof Mutebile. 

When he read the interview article he called me in to his grand office and signed off on an endorsement message and a message to potential donors to kick-start the sponsorship drive. I told him jokingly if I were a country my exchange rate would have improved by 10 per cent. He said if I were a company my stock would have shot up by 25 per cent. The Governor is also helping by picking up the phone to MDs of commercial banks. You know what happens when the governor of the central bank calls up private banks?

I shall forever be grateful that the interview article in Millennium Post kick-started the drive and I shall make a note of it in the diary section of my book – the end section where I note down what was going on around me during the writing of the book.